This is a story that begins long before the main characters were born.

A young doctor named Warren Byrne Nestler contracted polio while working with people with the viral disease at New York Hospital. Polio paralyzed his left arm, a condition he lived with for the next half century with little interference and less regret, because the disease helped him understand the challenges of illness and sharpened his sense of compassion.

"We never saw him as different than anybody else. It was not an issue," said his daughter, Sally O'Neill.

Warren Nestler married a nurse he met on the job and they raised seven children in Summit, in a large house that also held his office.

Those children saw how a medical mind deals with medical problems. With healing comes risk. Facing disease not only takes courage, it takes knowledge.

In the Nestler household, dinner conversation included topics of sickness and health, life and death, even when it came close to home. Warren Nestler became a cardiac specialist to help understand the illness of his second-oldest child, Philip, who was born with a heart defect and died at age 21, more than 35 years ago.

"After I had my own kids, I couldn't imagine how they dealt with it," Sally said. "You love your children so much, to lose one .¤.¤. How do you deal with that?"

Warren Nestler died at age 83 in September 2004. Two years later, Sally would nearly be forced to answer that question.

Her daughter, Meagan O'Neill, was away at college when "her body started crashing" in October 2006, Sally said.

Just like that, a mostly healthy young woman was inexplicably dying. For nine weeks, she was in intensive care at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York, becoming weaker, wasting away.

"We had access to the best doctors in the world, and no one could explain what was happening," her mother said.

Eventually she was diagnosed with a double-barrel of rare blood disorders: thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP) and hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS). Basically, her blood turned on her, and attacked her vital organs.

While in intensive care, Meagan had twice daily treatments of plasma exchange, going through 20 bags of donated plasma a day to replace her diseased blood, but the damage was done. She needed a kidney transplant.

While this was going on, the entire Nestler extended family was doing what Warren Nestler would have done. Taking it head-on. Learning. Preparing to take the risk that comes with healing.

"I would say we all had a research mentality," Sally said. "We were on the Internet constantly, sharing information. My brother Peter began contacting the world's foremost authorities."

"My mother would ask so many questions -- 'What's her LDH level? What's her platelet count? How's her creatinine?' -- the doctors would ask if she had a medical background," Meagan said.

As Meagan underwent three-hour dialysis treatments three times a week, both sides of the family -- Nestlers and O'Neills -- were tested as potential donors. The best match was Meagan's father, Tom O'Neill. The second best was her uncle, Andy Nestler of Chatham.

Tom began a lengthy battery of tests to ensure the success of the transplant and the continuing health of the donor.

"We were so anxious to get Meagan off dialysis it seemed like it was taking forever," Sally said.

Six weeks of repeated tests -- of blood pressure, kidney function, every imaginable x-ray and scan -- had Tom ready to donate his kidney to his daughter. A surgery was scheduled, but then a minor test raised concerns. Without a second thought, the family went to the second choice. And without a second thought, Andy Nestler decided to donate a kidney to his niece.

"I was over at Sally's house for lunch when the call game in (about Tom's last test)," he said. "She basically just looked at me and said, 'It's you.' I said, 'Okay.' It wasn't like she said, 'Go home and think about it.' And I didn't need to think about it. I'd worry about the consequences later."

And so, less than a year after she got sick, Meagan O'Neill was given her uncle's kidney and both are doing well.

The family now hopes to extend its medical tradition by raising organ and blood donor awareness. Meagan, who was interested in pop culture public relations, is now looking to do "something more meaningful" with her skills, in the medical field.

Her mother is in touch with the Sharing Network and Red Cross.

"If everybody who could be a donor would be a donor, the waiting lists for organs would disappear," Sally said. "Meagan used so much blood and plasma, we want to work to give something back. We're just figuring out how."

How to help: For more information on becoming an organ donor, contact The Sharing Network at 1-800-SHARENJ (1-800-742-7365) or go to www.sharenj.com. For information about blood donations call 1-800-GIVE-LIFE (1-800-448-3543) or visit www.givelife.com